the j. botter weblog

I hate Nickelback. This hatred is mostly due to the fact that they’ve recycled their hit single over and over again. They hit upon a formula early in their career that gave them a monster single, and so they’ve replicated that with each album. In fact, they have three songs that are nearly identical in structure, melody and pace.

Imagine my surprise when I get today’s edition of The Lesfetz Letter and discover Bob Lesfetz praising the new Nickelback single. Bob is a great barometer for music, so I figured I’d give the tune a shot. After all, he’s the reason I discovered The Feeling, and they’ve since gone on to be one of my favorite bands.

The song is good. It’s really, really good actually. It sounds like nothing Nickelback have ever done. It’s danceable, it’s got a hook that drips with pop perfection, and the production job Mutt Lange did is amazing. This song just sounds good.

“Gotta Be Somebody” will be the biggest single of 2008. People who listen to rock or pop radio are going to eat it up. Go download it and see for yourself.

Apologies for the lack of posting over the past few days. I (along with my cousin Bryan) have been busy writing the new record for our band, The Favorites, and my time has pretty much been consumed by that lately. Things are really looking good on that front, though, as we’re just about finished with six new songs. The goal is to write 15-20 songs and then pick the best 10 for the album, and we’re well on our way to hitting that goal.

Our plan is to hopefully hit the studio in late June or early July to record the album, and we’re bringing in a producer this time. I don’t want to jinx things by giving out names, but he’s an excellent producer who has a track record of nothing but great records under his belt.

I’ll talk more about it when the time is right. For now, go to our MySpace page and check out the first single, “Home”,  from our self-titled EP, which should be up on iTunes at some point over the next two months.

The folks from Snocap contacted me tonight after reading my previous post on the service to clarify some questions I had, so I wanted to take a moment to share what I learned from them with you.

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Thanks a lot, Stereogum. You just HAD to go and point out that the new Paris Hilton single "Stars Are Blind" is infectiously catchy, and so I downloaded it. And you know what? You're right. I hate myself for listening to it, but Paris has a killer chorus in this song. She's completely talentless and barely passable as a vocalist, but kudos go out to the producer and the songwriter of this tune. It's totally catchy in a bad kind of way, and if you're a glutton for bad pop and insanely catchy repeating melodies,  go download it from Stereogum before they take it down.

I got this from Mena. Hey Mena, how about a Vox invite? I signed up twenty minutes after you guys put up the email submission box for Comet; I would like to think that would put me in the top list of folks who signed up to hear more about Comet, and I still haven't gotten an invitation. I've been excited about Comet ever since hearing about it, and I would seriously consider moving from WordPress.com to Vox for my full-time blog, if only I could get IN.

Music meme after the jump.

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Rarely, if ever, do I enjoy a band enough to do something like this. I’ve been a fan of Radiant since I first heard The Sound Of Splitting Atoms; in fact, I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard the album. It’s very rare for a song or artist to strike me enough where I can still remember the small details four years later, but I can.

Radiant is a great band — quite possibly the best band in Texas, and I say that knowing that I’m in another killer band. They’ve got “it” — the talent, the artistry, and the dedication to their music and craft. Oh, and they’ve got a pretty killer sound and a lead guitarist named Dragan (pronounced Dragon). What’s more rock and roll than a guitarist named Dragan?

Nothing.

So, check it out — RadiantFans.com — a new fansite/community dedicated to the boys from Dallas.

I’ve been hyping Songbird for months on end.  This morning, as my bitter fight with iTunes came to an end with iTunes once again deleting my entire library and then laughing at me, I said to myself “self, wouldn’t it be nice if Songbird were out now?”  Lo and behold, I checked my email, and the Songbird 0.1.0 proof of concept has finally been released after a two month delay!

I’ll have more thoughts later.  Right now, sleep is beckoning with a powerful hand.

Forbes says Google is close to developing an iTunes competitor.

This should surprise exactly no one.  However, the real fun is going to come with seeing what form this store will take.  They’ve already proven they can screw up an easy thing with Google Video, so hopefully someone out at Google HQ takes a long, hard look at why iTunes works so well.  It shouldn’t be hard for them to figure out, because the rest of the company excels at it: ease of use. If they could apply what they’ve learned in search to the video and audio departments, they’d be way ahead of the rest of the pack in developing a decent app that could give iTunes a run for its money.

Or, they could just buy Songbird and make that the frontend.

I signed up for a premium Last.fm subscription.  Those who know me will know that I’m both fascinated and obsessed with charts related to the music industry.  Last.fm has a plugin you can install for iTunes that takes metadata about the songs yo play in iTunes and sends them to Last.fm.  I’ve got a profile page on there where you can keep track of what I played the most the previous week.  It’s updated sometime on Monday afternoons, so I’ll post them as soon as I get them.

I was definitely into Andrew Peterson last week.  I think it had something to do with seeing Narnia, considering that Far Country is supposed to represent the same basic storyline as the movie.  I suspect that next week’s top ten is going to look much, much different, because this will be the first week where I’ve had internet for more than a few days at a time, thus the results will be much more accurate.

This has been making the rounds today, so I thought I’d put it up here as well. Zoe is a 15 year old girl from California, and she’s got a podcast. What makes this show so special is just how awesome her taste in music is. Her Best Of 2005 show is now online, and it’s got a great lineup: One Block Radius, The Hold Steady, Okkervil River, Brendan Benson, Alaska!, The Break and Repair Method, Dios Malos, Art Brut, Fannypack, Natasha Benningfield, Kanye West, Fallout Boy, Deerhoof, Jamie Lidell, The New Pornographers, The Books, and Ted Leo.

I don’t advertise too many podcasts on here, but this one was too good to pass up. Go subscribe.